Now that the Richmond School Board/Richmond Public Schools have corrected their numbers, it turns out that the SAT “Mean District Score” for the Richmond Public School District has dropped from 954 for reading and math (combined) before, to 820 (also combined) after the change (Also note: Keep in mind that most Richmond public school seniors don’t take the SATs, just the ones who think they can go to college, thus skewing the scores higher than they otherwise would be).

This could prove to be a seminal moment in the effort to improve Richmond Public schools. The decision to go from 954 to 820 appears to be one of the results of the recent School Board/RPS Administration annual retreat. They apparently realized that RTD columnist Michael Paul Williams and Delegate Joe Morrissey were trying to help them, not hurt them.

As we know, the School Board/RPS Administration had been insisting for years in counting the Maggie Walker Regional School SATs as part of the Richmond School Division SAT scores. Richmond resident John Butcher, aka crankytaxpayer.org, has been pointing out this situation for years.

To paraphrase Mr. Williams, the use of Maggie Walker SAT numbers was an “obvious” mistake that couldn’t stand up to scrutiny, once exposed to the light of day by Mark Holmberg, WTVR ace reporter, and further revealed by RTD reporters Will Jones and Jeremy Slayton.